So you’ve signed up for iTunes Match and you’ve been enjoying access to all your music from the cloud, but did you know that there was another great benefit from the service?

You can easily upgrade all your lower audio quality locally stored music to iTunes-quality 256kbps AAC files. As long as an audio file has been matched and made available on iCloud you can get yourself a spanking high-bit-rate quality copy.

In this guide we’ll show you how you can quickly and easily upgrade your entire local music library with iTunes Match by first batch-deleting all low-bit-rate files and then downloading 256kbps tracks from iCloud. Note that iTunes will not overwrite any of your tags, the new high quality files you will download below will maintain all your original metadata and even play counts.

Everything we’ll be doing in this guide happens inside iTunes, so first fire up the software and read on.continue reading

This isn’t a discussion on which medium sounds better, analogue or digital, vinyl or CD (or SACD). There are already plenty of articles disputing either way. My only two cents on this is that some vinyl recordings sound incredible on a good analogue system, way beyond what any CD can offer, though CDs offer accurate sound reproduction.

No, this article will tackle listening to music as an experience and how the digital age has changed that. The two extremes are the slow, involved process of listening to an LP and the quick “take-out” experience of listening to digital audio files on a media player, be it an iPod, a Sonos system etc. It’s a subject that has not received much attention and is analogous to the comparison of the reading experience between the good old-fashioned book and the rapidly emerging eBook.

I will certainly not argue that we should trash our PMPs or digital audio systems and go back to listening music on vinyl. I store 95% of my music as digital audio files on a NAS and mostly listen to it from a computer and on the go on a Zune HD. But then I also have a relatively small collection of LPs that provide something more than a quick fix.continue reading

Using some smart HTML5 code, Swiss design studio Hinderling Volkart has created a showcase website on behalf of MSN, which combines Flickr images and song lyrics together with music to create a random and visually stunning result.

Music comes courtesy of the independent British record label, Ninja Tune. Images are picked at random matching each word from the song’s lyrics with a picture on Flickr; the lyrics themselves are displayed in a typical Metro UI typographical manner. The entire player reminds us of the Zune software player.continue reading

Although Apple missed its own end-October deadline for the release of iTunes Match, the $25 per year service is now available as a public beta for people living and breathing in the US.

The service basically uses iTunes to scan your music collection and gives you access to the same songs in high quality 256Kbps AAC on Apple’s servers. That is, unlike other cloud services, you don’t need to upload your files directly. It’s a neat idea since, it saves you the time and effort to upload files and gives you access to better quality rips, irrespective on the quality of your own files, accessible from all your iOS 5 devices. Of course if a file is not matched with one in Apple’s servers then it will be uploaded the old-fashioned way.

Because iTunes Match is in beta you get three free extra months on the annual subscription. Be warned that demand has been so high initially that Apple has suspended sign-ups temporarily. Those from other countries will have to wait unfortunately as Apple is still negotiating licensing deals outside the US.

To get started you need to download the latest version of iTunes (link after the break) 10.5.1 on your Mac or Windows PC. After installing, you can subscribe to the iTunes Match service from inside the iTunes Music Store — a link with iTunes Match will be highlighted on the right side of the main store page. After you sign-up and scanning and syncing is complete, on your iOS 5 device, go to ‘Settings’ > ‘Music’ and slide the iTunes Match switch to On.continue reading

Freddie Mercury, 70-80’s rock idol and lead singer of the Queen, would have been 65 today. Despite dying young, at the age of 45, he left a rich legacy as a songwriter, with songs such as “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “We Are the Champions”; even greater however is his legacy as a live performer and entertainer.

Queen guitarist Brian May, wrote on Google’s official blog: Freddie would have been 65 this year, and even though physically he is not here, his presence seems more potent than ever. Freddie made the last person at the back of the furthest stand in a stadium feel that he was connected. He gave people proof that a man could achieve his dreams.

True to form, Google has designed an animated Doodle, which can be seen on its front search page today. We nominate it as the most entertaining Google Doodle yet.continue reading

Biophilia is a project/album by Icelandic singer-actress-composer Björk. What makes it so special is that it’s the first interactive ‘app album’ putting as much importance on the experience and visuals as the music. Björk has composed part of the album on an iPad and so completing the circle the application has been released, in collaboration with Apple, on iTunes for iOS devices (iPad, iPhone, iPod touch).

The ‘host’ application is free to download and includes the theme song, Cosmogony. The host app is an interactive 3D map of the ‘cosmos’ made up by the different songs. Each additional song takes the form of an in-app purchase for an eventual total of ten songs for the album. Every song operates as a mini-app with different visuals and animations, a game, moving score for the song with karaoke playback and an essay. There are currently two songs that have been released, Crystalline and Virus, each available for $1.99.

Putting any discussion on excessive commercialization to the side, this is one of the most exciting and ground breaking music related productions we’ve seen. What’s important is that you are not checking your friends’ status on Facebook or sending an email while listening to the music, but actually interacting with the song. Art direction by interactive artist Scott Snibbe is excellent, though quite abstract, and certainly the experience is engaging. Although this is something that could have ended in just being a gimmick it certainly is not. We only lament the fact that this is an iOS app only.

You can find more about the app in the intro video narrated by the man himself, David Attenborough, together with the song Crystalline, after the break.continue reading